The Mega-City One Predator was a lone Yautja hunter in the 1997 Dark Horse crossover Predator vs. Judge Dredd. He landed in the wasteland outside Mega-City One and chose the city's Judges as his prey, killing more than ten of them in the streets, in a shopping complex, and on the rooftops. Already sick and in pain, he was tracked through a psychic link by the telepath Schaefer and killed by Judge Dredd in the buried ruins of old New York.
Biography
Arrival Outside The City
The Predator came down at night like a shooting star in the junk-strewn wasteland beyond Mega-City One, and his pod drilled itself into the ground instead of crashing. An old scavenger named Gomer and his robot Ben, stranded nearby with a broken axle on their rad-truck, went to look at it, and Gomer hoped the Judges would pay a reward for the find. The landing made no impact crater, and the pod sank into the earth with rings spinning around it, leaving little for anyone in the city to notice.
Watching from the wreckage, the hunter marked the robot's head with the three red dots of his laser sight and blew it off. When Gomer drew a pistol and shouted for him to show himself, a bolt from his shoulder cannon killed the old man. The Predator stood over the body with his spear and turned toward the lights of the city, where far more dangerous prey was waiting.
Ambush On The Zoom Line
In the early hours, the cloaked Predator watched from the girders as skyboarders fought a juve gang near Yeltsin Block, mimicked one youth's taunt in his own voice, and opened fire on the crowd. The gangs scattered when the Judges arrived, and three of them, Rourke, Tulk, and Sola, cornered some of the juves below the zoom line, an elevated monorail track. None of them suspected that the shooting had come from above, and the hunter held his position on the track, waiting for the lawmen to step into his sights.
From the track, the Predator shot Rourke dead and wounded Sola with a second blast. Judge Dredd arrived on his Lawmaster and had Tulk scan the line with infra-red, which revealed a tall figure firing from its shoulder. Dredd answered with high-explosive rounds from his Lawgiver and blew the hunter off the track and through the glass roof of the zoom shed below. It was the first time anyone in the city had seen the invisible killer, and it marked the start of the duel between the two.
Duel In The Zoom Shed
The fall did not kill him, and Dredd followed a trail of green blood into the dark machinery alone. The Predator ambushed him and fired a barbed harpoon on a cable into his left shoulder, then hauled him up toward the girders by the line. Dangling from the cable with the barb lodged in his flesh, Dredd was dragged closer to the hunter waiting above.
Unable to cut the cable, Dredd swung up and kicked the hunter in the face, knocking off his mask. He tore out the harpoon and fought the unmasked Predator with a metal pipe against his wristblades, but the alien was stronger and threw him down onto a rail. The hunter slipped away as other Judges arrived, and their infra-red sweep of the shed found only the injured Dredd, leaving the Predator free to continue his hunt.
Hunting The Judges
While Dredd recovered in the med-bay of the Grand Hall of Justice, the Predator killed two more Judges, Phillips in Mercy Plaza and Koch on the roof of a mile-high block. Koch was found with his head and spine ripped out, a trophy the hunter hung in his lair along with a Judge's helmet. Forensics identified the killer from his blood as a Predator, and the Justice Department files noted that such hunters had visited old New York in the 20th century and could not survive long without the filters in their helmets.
The psychic Schaefer, a descendant of Dutch Schaefer, explained that these hunters sought only the most dangerous prey and followed a warrior code. In Mega-City One that meant the Judges, and in his lair the Predator turned a stolen Judge's badge over in his claws. Two young scavengers soon stumbled on that lair in an old block awaiting demolition and found Koch's remains hanging on the top floor, but by the time an assault team stormed the building, the hunter had already moved on, leaving only fresh traces of blood.
The Shoppera
Still cloaked, the Predator followed a Petty Crime Unit Judge to the Shoppera, a domed shopping complex, and slipped in through a skylight grating. He blew one Judge's head off with a plasma bolt, dropped among the shoppers to kill a second with his shoulder cannon, and ran a third through with his spear on the stairs as he fled upward. Judges Millar and Rodman pursued him into the roof section, where he shot Millar, struck Rodman with a barbed bolt, and finished Millar with his wristblades.
Both men were found strung up dead with their badges taken, and the hunter escaped by clinging to the underside of a passing zoom train. Five Judges died at the Shoppera, and a sixth was found mutilated soon afterward, bringing the day's toll to eight and the total to eleven. Dredd judged that the Predator fought the only way a single hunter could against superior numbers, striking and running, and that he had accepted the challenge of taking on the whole Justice Department.
The Psychic Link
Schaefer's first readings of the Predator's blood gave her only vague impressions. That changed when a truck hit her car on the way home and the sample vial broke, and after tasting the blood on her hand, she saw the hunter's face in a sudden vision. The contact with the alien blood gave Schaefer the connection her psychic readings had lacked, and the hunter was no longer completely hidden from the Judges.
She drank the rest of the sample, and the stronger link let her reach into the Predator's mind, which he sensed in his lair. In a trance, Schaefer saw a captive Judge, which led Dredd to Frank Breen, who had gone missing after finding Undercity Gate 2012 forced open. For the first time, the Judges knew where the hunter was hiding, beneath the city itself.
The Death Of Judge Breen
Beneath the city, the Predator held Breen in chains, and the Judge taunted him to finish the job. The hunter slashed at him but then clutched his chest in pain, and outside the gate Schaefer felt the same agony and told Dredd that the creature was sick and possibly dying. The revelation suggested that the Predator's war on the Judges was being fought against time as well as against the city.
The Predator also picked up Breen's Lawgiver and pried open its grip, revealing that he had spotted the booby trap built into the gun. When he finally tore into Breen's chest, Schaefer felt the Judge die, and Dredd sent his squad and two Mark 7 War Droids through the gate. The Judges went down into the Undercity knowing they were entering the hunter's own ground.
Battle At The Cathedral
The Judges advanced through the contaminated ruins of old New York, buried in concrete after the Great Atom War, with their radios blanked out. The hunter heard them coming, and the droids found him on the spire of a ruined cathedral, where his shoulder cannon fire burned squad leader Tulk through his armor. Without radios, the squad had to fight its way forward on sight alone through the dark ruins.
Napalm from the droids set the Predator ablaze, and he fell from the spire and crawled out of the burning rubble without his mask. Inside the cathedral, he speared one droid's face, took a high-explosive round from Dredd, and rode the second machine, biting through its cables until it collapsed. Laser fire aimed at him struck a napalm tank, and the blast destroyed a droid and left Dredd burned and stripped to the waist, setting the stage for the final confrontation between the two.
Death
Dredd shot and wounded the Predator, but the hunter struck him from behind, slashed him with his wristblades, and knocked the Lawgiver from his hand. He then took up the human weapon himself, and when Schaefer stepped between them to plead that they could help him, he knocked her aside. Dredd dared him to fire, and the Lawgiver, keyed to its owner's heat print, exploded in the Predator's hand and left him among the Predators who lost limbs.
Dredd stabbed him with his boot knife, and the hunter roared with his mandibles spread before falling dead. Afterward, Schaefer told Dredd that the Predator had known the gun was trapped. She believed he had been dying and in such pain that he wanted to die, and Dredd concluded that he had taken on one last challenge he knew he could not win.
Weapons And Equipment
The Predator relied on his shoulder-mounted plasma cannon, aimed with a three-dot laser sight, for most of his kills, and he could fire it from the zoom line or a skylight before his prey ever saw him. His cloak kept him practically invisible to everyone except Judges using infra-red, and he could mimic human voices. Together, these tools let a single hunter strike at the Justice Department across the city and vanish again before reinforcements arrived.
For close work he carried twin wristblades, a long spear, and a handheld launcher that fired barbed harpoons and bolts on a cable, which he used against Dredd in the zoom shed and Rodman in the Shoppera. He wore a bio-mask with breathing filters, and he collected Judges' badges, along with Koch's head and spine, as trophies. In his final fight he lost the mask and turned to Dredd's own Lawgiver, a choice that cost him his arm.
Behind The Scenes
The Mega-City One Predator was written by Judge Dredd co-creator John Wagner and drawn by Enrique Alcatena for the three-issue miniseries Predator vs. Judge Dredd, published by Dark Horse Comics with Egmont Fleetway from October to December 1997. He is never named in the comic and is simply called the Predator, and fan sources such as Xenopedia list him by his hunting ground.
Dark Horse reprinted the story in the 2014 hardcover Predator vs. Judge Dredd vs. Aliens: Incubus and Other Stories, and 2000 AD included it in Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 27, placing the hunt inside Dredd's own continuity. He is not the Predator of the later Splice and Dice crossover, where Dredd fought alongside a separate clan of hunters, and he features among the site's underrated Predators and Predator crossovers.
Conclusion
The Mega-City One Predator waged a one-hunter war on the Justice Department, killing Judges from the zoom line to the Shoppera before a psychic link led them to his lair. Sick and dying, he chose a final fight against Judge Dredd in old New York and died by Dredd's knife after firing the trapped Lawgiver.
Appearances
- Predator vs. Judge Dredd #1-3 (1997)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Comics | Predator Deaths | Predator Lore
